Are you watching the Olympics this year?

Like many TV viewers, I get a little miffed every couple of years when the
Olympics take over a network's schedule. I don't begrudge the athletes their TV time, it's just that the Olympics take
a couple of weeks, and that means that shows you like are going to be preempted.

NBC has the Olympics again, starting February 10 and running
through the 26th. Which means that shows like The Biggest Loser and Joey and E-Ring are
taking a couple of weeks off. Oh, wait a second, maybe this isn't a bad thing...

Of course, I'm kidding, because NBC also happens to have The Office, My Name Is Earl,
Scrubs, and The West Wing too (the Surface season finale airs this Monday). But if
you're not into the Olympics, it's just something you'll have to live with until late February/early March, when
the shows return on a regular schedule. (Of course, I say this, but I know I'll get sucked into the Games...)

So, are you watching the Olympics this year? What events are you most interested in? Are people being too hard
on Bode Miller? And if you have no interest in the Olympics, what shows are you going to miss the most?

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14 Comments

I'm a Canadian so of course I'll be watching the Winter Olympics. I'll be watching on CBC and would suggest that my fellow Canadians who are unfortunate enough to be living in the US either take impromptu vacations back home or find a way to get an ExpressVu or Starchoice satellite system into the USA.

I hear that "curling is just shuffleboard on ice" crap from Americans all the time. It is an ancient game dating back to at least the 16th century, and I like to describe it as the strategy of Chess mixed with Newtons laws of motion, played with 42 lb. chunks of granite. Shuffleboard on ice indeed.

I would love to watch the Olympics - if the network would actually show them. Instead, like other posters have mentioned, we get loads of human interest crap that doesn't interest me at all, commercials out the wahzoo and never ending teasers for the events coming up. For each hour of coverage, it seems like we get 5 minutes of actual competition.

I wish they would do a "Sunday Ticket" kind of thing where you could pay to see the events that are of interest without all the other junk. Maybe they do, I got disgusted with the coverage and haven't watched the games in several years. Is such a thing available?

I won't be watching at all, as I am dismayed with what NBC has done to the Olympics. The way in which they've turned the games into a human interest soap opera at the expense of showing actual competition is infuriating. I'll look for some type of after the fact coverage on the net.

I won't miss any shows, since I Tivo them and watch at different times, anyway. And Mark Allen, a show's "last episode of all time" is called a SERIES finale. A season finale is just the last show of the season, without any anticipation of the show being cancelled.

I will watch all the good hockey games and probably a few of the not so good ones too. And also some snowboarding. As for curling...definetly a sport. Much like golf, it is great to watch once you actually understand the skill involved. And great fun to play. If you havnt tried it then you should. Much better workout than golf too.

Maybe I'm a sucker for melodrama, but I -love- the Olympics. I couldn't care less about sports, but the Olympics get me every time. I'll probably watch all of it, but I loved the snowboarding from the last Olympics. So yeah, our favorite shows (I've watched Criminal Intent every week for four years) are gone for a couple of weeks, but we'll get more episodes later. In the interim, I'll ponder the meaning of Apolo Ohno's soul patch.

Treasure Hunt, if you haven't watched it, how can you say curling isn't a sport? It's fantastic! As an American living in Canada, I was introduced to it during the Salt Lake Olympics and now am a huge fan. Don't knock it until you've watched it!